Creating a scene in maya

I haven't heard anything about the actual task from tafe I would have done if I wasn't sick but I have seen a couple images from my fellow students. So.... not even sure if this would have counted but ....what can I do.


Its supposed to be an alleyway behind a suburban home.


Rant time...

Its supposed to be an alleyway behind a suburban home.
I wanted to add some more mood oriented visuals so I thought a .. night time fog, smoke or moisture in the air would accomplish that but I didn't like the idea of adding a light fog to all my lights and changing them according so I searched for a way to add a "light fog" to the whole scene but I couldn't see anything. What I was trying to find reminded me of a 3d fluid container with an emitter so I tried that and messed with its particle opacity or whatever and the turbulence of it (for wind) till I got what you see in the image. I honestly would not be surprised if I did the stupidest thing ever in maya to get that effect and there are many, many easier ways to do it but.... meh.

I think i need to turn down the intensity of the blue ambient light I got in there for the "night time" look. I also think I need to mess around with the grass I added (to distract from the crappy floor texturing) so that it reacts to light better.


MURRRRRR Fail.

I should probably stick with the stuff I know and not experiment..... lol... that's how progress is made. ( that last bit was sarcasm lol)

Frustration. trying some knew things, want some more detail and stuff but having some trouble with my bump and displacement maps.

Tried adding some trash cans to... add to the scene but I was having trouble with them also. modeling was easy enough but the texturing got to me. The didnt look right to me, stuck out horribly with no detail next to the bump mapped and textured fence. lol I even went into trying .... HDR texturing or whatever, using the surroundings to use as a texture on an object so it will have a more realistic reflective image or whatever but I don't think I could pull it off cause I needed to use a mental ray node that wasn't compatible with maya software rendering and as we all know bump mapping doesn't work on Autodesk Maya 2010 mental ray. ( Interestingly enough, I found out the problem is fixed on 2011,.... so..... woo). Anyway!! tried adding a ramp texture to it then changing it to a 2 colour gradient and changing the top colour to a light metallic silver like a cliche trash can then adding a simple fractal texture to the bottom colour and changed it to a light brown-ish colour then kicked up the noise of the ramp to like .3 or something wacky like that. My intention was rust but just turned out as another in a long line of failures.... I mean really awesome things I should learn up on to become better at 3d animations.

WOW... ..... need.... sleep.....